


God Is In The Rain

by cantonforking



Series: Cyclical Eternity [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Love/Hate, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantonforking/pseuds/cantonforking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'<i>God is in the rain'. </i>Castiel struggles with the absence of a father and then with the absence of <i>Her</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God Is In The Rain

God is in the rain  
\- Alan Moore, _V For Vendetta_

 

_God is in the rain._

This is what Castiel finds in one of those books that combines words and images to make something more beautiful than all the intricate literature he shelves. God is in the rain. He rolls the idea around in his head over and over again until the rain becomes oceans and seas that slosh about and drown all his other thoughts.

God is in the rain. He’s never thought of anything so strangely comforting. He can’t explain it; this idea, this wild hope invades his senses until he’s searching through the library for books on rain dances. It’s hard being human but it’s harder still to be so far from home, never to return. If God is in the rain, then only the frivolity of weather can barricade him from his father.

He puts the graphic novel away with a frown on his face, pushes it back until it hits the wall and he can’t see the title any longer. Red words on black; they don’t stand out, like blood soaking into coals. It’s a silly notion, false hope provided for a dystopian future. Humanity, humans, they anger him with their misunderstanding of God and if that anger’s really directed at himself, he doesn’t think upon it.

If God is in the rain then he’s in the water, cleaning them, purifying them, keeping the human race alive. If God is in the rain then why do droughts crack the earth and line graveyards with fresh bodies and parched lips? No, Castiel thinks, God is not in the rain. God is gone and he has been for some time. Castiel’s alone in the world, alone - apart from her.

 

  
\----------- 

  
Summer hair, summer eyes, summer skin, but winter smile, cold and hard as ice. He loves her as much as he hates her, or perhaps he hates her as much as he loves her. It matters little, together they are condemned.

Long nails; sharp, white and filed. They rasp against his skin, tickle the stubble on his cheek or scour deep into his back, flail of a kind, flagellation of a kind. Her mouth tips open, demon heartbeat on her tongue, and he can’t deny that he loves the way she feels; sounds; is.

Little whirlwind dance of anger. They shout and scream and match their furies. It’s useless, hopeless, never losing ground and so never gaining it. In the right light her eyes flash black. At the right angle the neon light gives him a halo. Then they circle each other and she’s crowned angel and he’s convicted demon.

Little whirlwind dance of anger. When it falls apart he can’t read her face, can’t see the emotions. They collapse in exhausted piles of disillusionment and uncertainty. Their dainty domestic pretence balances on hopes and dreams and how do they keep it alive? Each their father’s twisted children, bent and hammered until there’s nothing left. Empty vessels, each trying to fill the soul of the other.

It ends when he hauls himself to his feet, pulls himself up against the heavy wooden table, and offers her his hand. Her skin’s warm against his, delicate and thin, breakable like ice. She’s all the seasons with her winter smile and summer hair, her bronzed autumn skin and her slim fingers like spring flowers. He loves her and hates her but when she curls her arms around him and they exchange apologies, he thinks he loves her more than anything.

 

\-----------

  
  
She leaves one night in a cloud of smoke and dust and pebbles like ash coughed upon the ground. He stands in the living room of his small apartment, little life, and listens to the motorbike engine fade. She leaves because this time their whirlwind dance of anger was a hurricane and Castiel doesn’t quite understand but he thinks it was something he said. Listening to the engine roar fade, his little apartment has never been so big.

He’s read enough of the books in the library to know that this was always going to happen. One day she was going to hate him more than she loved him and she’d leave. He knows, this is something that happens to humans and so this feeling, this pain that weighs heavy on his chest, it must be human too.

The engine roar fades away and he begins to pick the glass shards from the carpet.

 

  
\----------- 

  
Morning comes and he wakes in an empty bed. For some reason he doesn’t quite understand; he wasn’t expecting to wake alone. He was expecting her to return and walk on silent feet across their floor, slip into their bed without waking him. Everything seems sluggish, slow, and he drags himself from the sheets with heavy limbs. The living room’s still too big, too empty, although they only broke one vase, only smashed one picture frame. He sits and thinks and wonders what has gone wrong.

Then, without him knowing, time has passed. Hours have fallen away and he has been sitting at the table, staring at the door. Waiting. This, he thinks, is unbearable. His heart hurts, sitting two sizes too big in his chest and his thoughts won’t rest, won’t run from memories of her.

Her smile and her eyes and her soft voice that whispered salvation in his ear. He wishes and prays that he hated her more than he loves her. He wishes and prays that he was still an angel and never human. The sun disappears and she’s still not beside him. The moon begins its journey and he hasn’t moved. It’s a long time before he realises he can smell smoke.

It’s cold at the moment, in the middle of nowhere. Winter has brought chilled fingers and their breath comes in steam clouds as though to reassure them that they are still alive. Meg bought a heater to crouch beside their bed like a dog waiting to be pet. Castiel forgot to turn it off, forgot to make the bed, forgot about the duvet draped over his fire-breathing pet.

Eventually he recognises the smell of smoke but it’s too late. The fire alarm explodes to life as he shakily stands. It sounds like a scream, ringing through the building, like someone’s already burning alive. Flames lick under the door to his bedroom – their bedroom – and Castiel’s home’s on fire.

He moves without thinking, runs to the bedroom door and throws it open. The door handle burns his hand, white-hot from the fire, but he barely notices. Beyond the door everything’s flames, Hell trapped in a bedroom. It’s eating its way out and the window suddenly explodes into the street below. Now there are real screams.

Smoke crowds against him, slinks down his throat until he’s coughing and choking, billows against his face until tears are streaming down his cheeks. It would matter but somewhere Castiel has forgotten all he has learned about being human. Body, vessel, meat-suit, the difference is not in the dictionary definition.

He decides to hold his breath and walks into the flames. It’s hot. It’s so hot and he thinks it feels like Hellfire on Angel’s skin. He wants to scream but he won’t give Lucifer the satisfaction.

It’s there, on his bedside table, where it waits for him every morning. Meg laughed the first time she saw it, told him to throw it away. He knows the truth though, has seen her fingers linger on the leather cover when she thought he wasn’t looking.

The fire’s inches away when he snatches the book from its jaws. Automatically his arms fold around the thick tome, clutch it protectively to his chest. His fingers press against the pages and he drops his cheek to the top edge. There’s a lightness in his heart now, even as the smoke seethes in his lungs and the flames reach for him.

A hand grabs his arm, pulls him backwards and he almost loses his balance. There’s someone in the smoke and for a heartbeat he thinks it’s her. For a heartbeat he thinks it’s God. For a heartbeat he thinks it’s Lucifer. Then four heartbeats pass and the fire-fighter’s yelling at him.

“Move, Cas!” Hands shove him towards the door. Small town America, everyone knows everyone. George hauls him through the living room, through his burning apartment. “Don’t stop.”

He almost falls on the stairs, can’t let go of the book to steady himself. George catches him, continues to hold onto him as they descend and it isn’t until they reach the bottom that Castiel realises he can’t breathe. Can’t stop coughing, can’t feel his lungs expanding, can’t focus his eyes.

They sit him in the back of an ambulance, tell him not to move. Everywhere lights are flashing, jarring his vision so he closes his eyes. Invisible hands fit a mask to his face and finally air’s filling his lungs. A blanket wraps around his shoulders to block out the cold that he didn’t realise was there.

He loses a little time then, dropped away in multi-coloured flares across his eyelids and voices shouting, screaming, talking all around him. When he opens his eyes he has to blink rapidly to clear his vision. A few last tears well up and spill down his face. Men aren’t supposed to cry but he can’t seem to care about being human.

There are people everywhere, fire-fighters running to halt the blaze, paramedics helping people breathe, mothers and fathers holding their children and all of them are watching his home burn. No, he tells himself. They’re watching their own homes burn.

Pain jolts through him, digging into his chest until he’s trying to catch his breath once more. It takes him a while to recognise the pain. Guilt; he has burned down their homes. He thinks that he wants to cry. He thinks that he wants to run. He thinks that he should tell someone, tap a policeman on the shoulder and say, ‘I’m so sorry sir, I left the heater on’. He thinks that he wants to laugh.

There, an engine roar, rumbling under the commotion like a baseline to their emergency. Castiel doesn’t move, can’t move, just listens until the sounds fades. Then he watches the crowd, eyes darting over every face. It’s a long time before he spots her, thin figure bulked out by motorbike leather. She’s talking to a policeman. She’s running a hand through her hair. She’s turning, spinning, eyes searching.

Without thinking he stands, feels the blanket fall from his shoulder and the cold fills its place. He clambers unsteadily down from the ambulance and she has seen him. The mask on his face won’t stretch so he pulls it off. Chemicals flood his brain, shake his head, make him feel fuzzy. Someone tells him to sit down, come back but he doesn’t listen.

Pushing through the crowd, she stand in front of him. The book in his arms slips to the ground as he pulls her in to him. He can’t think, can’t speak, just holds her close and buries his face in her hair. Meg’s arms slide around his neck, rest on the broken stumps that used to hold his wings.

He tells her that he’s sorry, tells her that he burnt their home and he’s so sorry. He’ll build her a new one he says and he can’t seem to stop talking. His voice breaks like smoke clouds in the wind and he begs her not to leave.

She pulls away from him then, eyes confused. She shakes her head and tells him he didn’t burn anything. The police told her the fire started in the apartment below theirs, a freak accident. The fire alarm didn’t go off until the fire had spread too far. No one could’ve done anything.

The world shakes and slumps. He feels like Jonah escaping the wale. He feels like a Winchester saving the world. He remembers the morning, remembers turning off the heater as he dragged himself from an empty bed. He couldn’t forget that, Meg always reminded him.

She bends down and picks up the book on the pavement. Carefully she brushes dust and ash from the cover. Her fingers hesitate over the golden letters of the title. Then she pushes it into his hands.

“You went back in for it, didn’t you?” Her face is a mask, cold and blank. “There’s no salvation in that, not anymore. They never love their children.”

He opens the cover of The Bible. There’s a photograph inside. It’s of a barmaid who never knew her picture was being taken until it was too late. She’s smiling and laughing and in the right light her eyes will turn black.

Castiel looks back at Meg and her eyes are blown wide. He opens his mouth to speak but before he can a raindrop falls on the tip of his nose. All around them people look up at the sky, smiles on their faces as the rain falls. In the blackened apartment building the fire hisses and dies.


End file.
